Feminine in Nine (Julius Eastman) MCA Performance

Program Notes

Introduction

Hello. My name is Jeremy Rose and welcome to this extraordinary event. What you are about to hear is perhaps unlike anything you’ve heard before. I hope to give you a bit of background on Julius Eastman’s relevance today, our approach to his score, the relationship with the Julie Mehretu’s works and what Eastman means to me.

Eastman’s work has found new relevance to today – he is an unsung hero of the avant-garde and one of the more significant yet unrecognised composers of the minimalist generation. I’m proud that this is the first known professional performance of this work in Australia.

Put yourself in the classical world of 1970s New York– traditionally white, a bastion of tradition and steeped in conservative values. Along comes Julius Eastman: a young, audacious, outrageous personality, unapologetically black and gay artist. He was a brilliant composer, dancer and singer that led a multifaceted career that tragically ended in addiction and homelessness at the age of 49 in 1990. He was prolific and yet many of his scores were handwritten, either given away as gifts to friends or lost during his eviction from his downtown apartment in New York.

Eastman’s work was politically aggressive, challenging the edifice that he was surrounded by. His works used intentionally confrontational and politically charged titles, including Gay Guerilla and three connected works that included the N-word. These titles challenged the conventions of classical music and the societal structures that marginalised voices like his. His life and compositions reflect the struggles and dialogues that are still crucial to today. His work existed before the term intersectionality was even coined - his work on tackling these issues feels pioneering and continues to draw attention.

Eastman’s approach to composition anticipated the current musical environment embraces of genre fluidity. His work blends elements from minimalist, avant-garde, classical and pop music, and was influenced by the modal jazz of Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane, Terry Riley’s minimalist modular works, John Cage’s stopwatch and indeterminacy works as well as his other activities as a vocalist in Meredith Monk’s ensemble and keyboard play in disco group Dinosuar L.

Eastman’s approach to his so called “organic music”, allowed for flexibility and improvisation within structured minimalism, echoing today’s performance practice that favour a more fluid and open-ended interpretation of a score.

One of the biggest challenges—and joys—of approaching this piece was embracing the ambiguity.

Eastman provides minimal instructions, sometimes poetic rather than prescriptive. He was known for providing compositional cues communicated in rehearsals. The score that has recently been published by Wise Music, collected handwritten scores with notes from Eastman and the performers. So, we approached the score as a starting point, and cross referenced with all the existing recordings of the work.

Our ultimate goal here is to create a kind of three-way dialogue between Eastman’s voice, each individual player’s agency, and the group’s collective intuition. I deliberately chose musicians that draw from existing ensembles including New Music group Ensemble Offspring and improvising ensemble Microfiche, both of which I have previous experience performing with. The first rehearsal took some getting used to, and understanding of what the score was asking of us, but once we have understood the level of freedom that we have, the second rehearsal was effortless and far more natural to us improvisers. Don’t be surprised if you see sections where players drop in and out. The work is in fact a marathon, not a sprint, and we take our time to build various sections through individually dropping in and out.

I’ve also curated strategic solo moments throughout the piece to bring forward different voices in the ensemble—this honours Eastman’s spirit of improvisation and hopes to bring forward a new perspective on the work. You’ll also hear more electronic elements, including the replacing of piano with synthesizer, performed by Novak.

The work was developed in an open-minded, democratic and experimental environment. Eastman’s major achievement was in extracting maximum output from minimal instruction. It’s a delicate balance between structure and freedom, individual agency and group cohesion.

Femenine starts with this cosmic jazz sounding sleigh bells—echoing the music of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. Eastman originally used a machine to play these but today we’ll be using a sample. These continue for the full 70 minutes of the work. The performers use a timer to which we use to follow along with the cues on the score.

From this, a 13-beat melody slowly emerges and repeats for over an hour on the vibraphon. Around that, layers evolve, textures shift, solos rise and fade. It’s simultaneously static and active, meditative and ecstatic.

You’re invited to let go of time, to feel the piece more than analyse it. Whether you’re familiar with the music’s history and how Eastman’s  revolutionary ideas fit within the genesis of minimalism or completely new to his work, this is a piece that opens a door into his world—to not only provoke thought but offer a reflection on beauty and the possibility of creating something transcendental.

Performing Femenine in this setting is immersive and embodied; we are surrounded not only by sound, but by imagery that echoes and refracts Eastman’s world.

It’s rare to find visual art directly inspired by musical compositions. We know of examples of such relationships: Kandinsky and Schoenberg, Basquiat and Charlie Parker, but it is often the other way round. And that’s why this performance event is so special.

There exists a rare and beautiful synergy between the sounds you will hear and the art you can see. Julie Mehretu’s Feminine in Nine paintings were directly inspired by Eastman’s composition. There’s a powerful dialogue between the visual and the sonic—both works explore ideas of drawing content from minimal materials. Perhaps you can see similarities in the use of texture, lines, shifting dynamics and even colour.

Performing Eastman’s work today is humbling.

Eastman was an anomaly in his time—an iconoclast, provocateur, a composer who was able to hop between the worlds of elite universities, New York’s downtown scene, discos, and concert halls without ever compromising who he was. And yet he was punished for that.

Performing his music is an act of honouring his legacy, but also of activating it. There’s so much we still don’t know about him—and so much to learn.

But I think the act of playing Femenine brings us closer to his world, while also reminding us that his ideas—about race, gender, power, and freedom—are still pushing us forward.

A rare performance of Julius Eastman's minimalist masterpiece Femenine (1974), presented in-gallery alongside Julie Mehretu’s Femenine in Nine series. Includes a welcome drink and introduction by MCA Director Suzanne Cotter and myself.
Tickets →

Here Jeremy and Niki Johnson talk to Andrew Ford on ABC RN’s The Music Show.

Julius Eastman was a provocative figure who was well ahead of his time and an important voice amongst the 70's NYC downtown scene. His work has been undergoing a recent rediscovery and continues to resonate with its ability to interrogate performance and hierarchical norms in music and society.

The work was the main impetus for a series by Julie Mehretu - Feminine in Nine - nine large abstract works that surround the space we will be performing in. They act as a form of graphic interpretation of Eastman's piece.

I visited the MCA recently and have been blown away by Mehretu's work, not to mention being in love with her cover on one of my favourite albums of late, Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders Promises. Her process was particularly inspiring - taking politically charged photographs and abstracting them in a number of ways. 

I've put together a 12-piece version of the Earshift Orchestra featuring some New Music specialists and friends from Ensemble Offspring. This will truly be a special and memorable concert, I hope you can join.

Niki Johnson: vibraphone, Claire Edwardes OAM: marimba, Novak Manojlovic: keyboard, synthesisers, Susie Bishop: violin, Isabel Tzorbatzaki: violin, Freya Schack-Arnott: cello, Max Alduca: double bass, Hilary Geddes: guitar, Jeremy Rose: tenor and soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, electronics, Philippa Murphy-Haste: bass clarinet, clarinet, viola, Lamorna Nightingale: flute, piccolo, Sam Gill: alto and sopranino saxophone